But in the US, for now, the movement is “submerged,” that’s one word I’ve heard used. Of course there are always good people organizing all sorts of things as always. Large antiwar protests are being planned for this month and next month all over the country. Many people are getting more active around climate change and the lack of any positive initiative being taken by the powers that be. People in Colorado and Minnesota are organizing civil society’s response to the conventions of our two elite parties in this electoral cycle. Activists do the work they do as always, organizing, writing, teaching, running local Peace & Justice Centers, having weekly vigils, feeding the homeless, and so many other things.

But the IMF, World Bank and other such institutions have their meetings largely unopposed in the US these days.

A score for the forces of world domination, the forces of the rich and powerful, for whom 9/11 was a wet dream, a gift, a way out of the ideological battle they were losing, a way to avoid losing the consent of the governed in their neoliberal policies, a way to divert attention from the massive scandals at Enron, Worldcom, Xerox, a way to make someone like Bush look “presidential,” a sacrifice well worth making to allow them to further their sick agenda of “full spectrum dominance.”

But once again, their facade is crumbling. Support for Bush and the Democrat-controlled Congress are at all-time lows, CNN and Newsweek have to admit it, grudgingly, sporadically. The movement is submerged, but the bulk of the people of the US are more cynical than ever. It seems to me that something else is going to happen. Every self-respecting leftist would like to know exactly what form it will take, but nobody seems to know for sure. What’s sure is that as long as there is inequity there will be resistance. As long as people keep their humanity, they will want to show their solidarity with their brethren around the world.

The only thing that can temporarily muzzle this spirit is the maintenance of the idea that “the other” is not like us, he is bearded, angry, evil. The powers-that-be can maintain this idea through propaganda, and they can maintain this idea by killing enough innocents so that the next Mohammed Atta is a matter of inevitability.

And ultimately they can maintain this illusion best if the next attack comes soon.

FREE VOICE OF AMERICAA Service of The Government of the United States of America in ExileVia et alSeptember 12, , 2007

Dear Friends and Colleagues,Jan Lundberg's piece below is encouraging. I'm pleasantly surprised that both Al Gore and James Hansen "have recently come out for civil disobedience on behalf of the climate".Between '66 and '00 and I was arrested 16 times at civil disobedience in various contexts.But today's circumstances are quite different from those during recent decades. What we've learned--quite painfully--during these BOOsch Junta years is that neither major US political party any longer responds to even the most obvious moral appeals. So we must reach them within the only context they care about: money.We must begin to say that a civil disobedience context which isn't expensive for the oppressors usually must be regarded as a mere gesture rather than as an action.Among exceptions, though, is the fast. It doesn't cost the oppressors any money but it's nevertheless good theater because it reaches certain fence-sitters by encouraging them to conclude that we feel quite deeply about our cause--and are confident of our information--or else we wouldn't have enough resolve to accept such a large change in our daily routines. In the words of W. C. Williams it's effective to "go with some show of inconvenience".Perhaps the most likely way to become too expensive for the junta is by forming a coalition of movements big enough for a high-impact boycott.Another promising path involves large groups of protesters behaving in such a radically decentralized manner that the dreaded US police and military are forced to play them one-on-one. This quickly becomes quite expensive--and thus may cause major changes in the junta's currently ecocidal behavior.

Yours for all species,

Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te,

Ponderosa Pine

PS: Back during the WW2 years an Indian resister to the Brit invaders wrote Gandhi to ask if blowing up a goods (ie., freight) train is an act of violence. Gandhi published his reply in his Harijan periodical: blowing up a passenger train is an act of violence.